I remain firm with a stance that Intel continues to bribe OEM partners even to this day.
But that’s just a conspiracy theory, what wasn’t a theory was back in the early to mid 2000’s when Intel CPUs were getting absolutely hammered in performance by AMD’s revolutionary Athlon 64, and of course because there’s no company on this Earth that you can consider to be a friend, AMD’s dominance was so severe they even tried to peddle “Black Edition” CPUs for $1000.
Intel was getting demolished in the DIY market, however throughout the mid 2000’s as they were trying to peddle garbage after garbage in the form of the Prescott and NetBurst architectures, which ran hotter, performed way off the mark compared to AMD, they hatched a little plan.
This cunning plan was particularly effective because, during the 2000s, the DIY PC market was not as extensive and popular as it is today. Instead, the majority of consumers chose to purchase OEM prebuilt machines from well-known brands such as HP, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, and other vendors.
Intel provided kickbacks, rebates, and special pricing to OEM system vendors on the condition that they limit their orders of superior AMD Athlon 64 processors. This agreement aimed to restrict the number of OEM systems equipped with AMD CPUs that were available for sale.
The EU investigation revealed several key findings:
- Intel provided rebates to manufacturers with the condition that they exclusively or predominantly purchased CPUs from Intel, as seen in the case of Dell. – Retail stores received rebates from Intel to only stock x86 parts.
- Intel offered financial incentives to computer manufacturers, such as Dell, Acer, Lenovo, and NEC, to delay or prevent the launch of AMD hardware.
- Intel imposed restrictions on the sales of AMD CPUs based on business segment and market. OEMs were allowed to sell a higher percentage of AMD desktop chips, but they were required to purchase up to 95% of business processors from Intel.
Additionally, at least one manufacturer was prohibited from selling AMD notebook chips altogether.
It was a mutually beneficial arrangement for both parties, as dealing exclusively with Intel instead of AMD resulted in higher profit margins and essentially free money for OEMs. Allegedly, Dell received up to $1 billion per year from Intel to refrain from using AMD CPUs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices,_Inc._v._Intel_Corp.
Intel’s legal team is renowned for their expertise, as they successfully prolonged the court case against AMD for several years. Eventually, a verdict was reached in favor of AMD, resulting in a payment of $1.25 billion dollars to AMD while additionally Intel were fined over one billion Euros by the European Commission for breaching antitrust laws.
But that didn’t stop Intel from being even more cancerous by appealing the EU’s decision.
But this needn’t be of actual concern because by the time the lawsuit had finally been settled the damage had already been done, with AMD Athlon 64 processors effectively being barred from OEM PCs and Mobile devices for so long, Intel had manage to catch up in the processor race and simply run away with the introduction of the Core 2 in flavors of dual-core and quad-cores.
AMD never managed to recover from its loss of sales and profits throughout this period with lack of continued research and development leading to performance regression and stagnation as Intel’s lead only grew larger by the year, at least until the introduction of the Zen architecture back in 2017 which flipped Intel’s quad-core script up their own ass.
Never mind the fact that there exists millions of corporate apologists who try and obscure history, facts and logic by spreading propaganda and misinformation regarding the fact that the Intel corporate had been found guilty of paying OEM vendors to not sell AMD CPUs, and they honestly doubt that Intel would dare do such grubby antics even today.
Why is this relevant today? Well aside from the fact that this blatant abuse of power and corporate scheming has written off Intel as a trustworthy brand in the eyes of myself and many others, the European Commission has re-imposed a fine towards the Intel corporation to the sum of €376.36 million for their previously established anticompetitive OEM bribery practices breaching EU antitrust laws.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_23_4571
In 2022, the General Court made a partial annulment of the 2009 Commission’s decision. Specifically, it overturned the Commission’s finding regarding Intel’s conditional rebates practice.
However, the General Court upheld the ruling that Intel’s naked restrictions constituted an abuse of its dominant market position, in violation of EU competition rules. Furthermore, the General Court completely annulled the fine imposed on Intel, as it was unable to determine the specific amount of the fine solely pertaining to the naked restrictions.
As a result of this ruling, the Commission will issue a new decision that imposes a fine on Intel specifically for the naked restrictions it imposed. These restrictions occurred from November 2002 to December 2006 and involved Intel making payments to three computer manufacturers (HP, Acer, and Lenovo).
The purpose of these payments was to obstruct or delay the release of certain products that contained competing x86 CPUs and to restrict the sales channels available for these products.
The Commission considers naked restrictions to be a significant violation of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). As a result, the Commission has chosen to reintroduce a fine of approximately €376.36 million on Intel.
The reduced fine, as determined in the current decision, is a reflection of the narrower extent of the infringement in comparison to the 2009 Commission decision.
Despite the conclusion of the initial case, the fight continues as the Commission has filed an appeal against the dismissal of the rebates aspect. If the appeal court determines that the rebates indeed violated competition laws, Intel may face further fines. However, the €376 million fine remains unchanged, as Intel chose not to appeal that particular ruling.
Now that’s what I call justice.
